


14 lines from from love letters or suicide notes

by cettevieestbien



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Based on a Poem, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Steve Angst, Steve Feels, Subtext, it will be linked, major death is Peggy, more like, nonstalgia, that are not in any way explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 13:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5541536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cettevieestbien/pseuds/cettevieestbien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stays up toute la nuit. He shivers, feeling cold when the heat is at 80 degrees, and he begs himself to leave Sam alone.</p><p>Steve Rogers is the fighting sort, though and he keeps thinking, "I should tell Sam. I should tell him that I need help."</p><p>But he never does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	14 lines from from love letters or suicide notes

**Author's Note:**

> *the suicide stuff is mainly subtext. the only non-subtext mention i can think of is the title, honestly.
> 
> inspired by the poem here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy4cEW15SdE
> 
> if you don't wanna watch it, here is the transcript:
> 
> 14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes
> 
> 1\. Don't freak out.   
> 2\. We've both known this has been coming for a long time.  
> 3\. I've been staying awake at night wondering if I should tell you.  
> 4\. I bought the kind of crackers you like to eat, they are in the hall cupboard.  
> 5\. Now that we have watched all the episodes of 'True Blood' I do not know what else to do next  
> 6\. I always imagined this would happen without warning like suddenly on a ocean cliff side, but this is the kind of thing where waiting for the time to be right would just mean waiting forever.  
> 7\. I've just been too afraid for too long  
> 8\. I came home on Tuesday and found all of the chairs that I own stacked in a tower in the center of my kitchen. I don't know how long they have been like that, but it could only be me that did it. its the kind of thing a ghost might do to prove to the living that he is still there. I am haunting my own apartment.  
> 9\. My grandmother was still alive when I was 5 years old, and she asked me to check and see if the iron was hot enough yet, so I pressed my hand against it and it was red and screaming for hours.   
> 25 years later, she would still sometimes apologize. In the middle of conversations, "I feel so bad about making you touch the iron," she'd say as though it had just happened. I can not imagine how we forgive ourselves for all the things we didn't say until it was too late. But how else do you tell if something is hot but to touch it?  
> 10\. I keep imagining my furniture in your apartment.  
> 11\. I wonder how many likes this would get on Facebook.  
> 12\. My dad always used to tell the same joke, but I can't remember the punchline.  
> 13\. I was 8 years old and it took 3 weeks -- three 8 year old weeks, imagine -- to gather everything that I would need to be Batman: Rope, boomerangs, a Mardi Gras mask with beads cut off. I couldn't find a cave near my house so I buried them all in a bundle under the ivy.   
> For years after, I tried to find that spot again. The ivy grew too fast, I searched in so many spots, it seemed impossible that I had missed one, but I never found it.  
> How can something be there, and then not be there?  
> How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?  
> 14\. I never had the courage to buy bright green sheets. I wanted them but thought they were too brash even with no one but me to see them. I bought a set yesterday and put them on the bed. I knew that you would like them.

1.

 

Steve is told, first thing after being herded back into the building, "don't freak out."

 

He doesn't understand what it means when he hears it, but years later, when he's reeling from looking Bucky in the eyes again, he has some idea. It's not like anyone's told him what it means, but enough people have said it that he thinks he gets it.

 

"Don't freak out." 

 

Don't do anything rash. Don't react too quickly. Don’t react in a certain way.

 

Don't break.

 

2.

 

They don't say it, but he hears them think it. They all think so loud, the Barnes’, and Steve always hears.

 

They think that his mother dying had been expected. It had, but the shock of it still hurts.

 

Bucky tells him, "we've both known this has been coming for a long time."

 

Steve responds to him, "knowing and feeling are two different things."

 

3.

 

Steve stays up all night long. He can't sleep, has awful nightmares that stink of war and death.

 

He thinks all night long, practises French and ASL in his head.

 

He stays up  _ toute la nuit _ . He shivers, feeling cold when the heat is at 80 degrees, and he begs himself to leave Sam alone.

 

Steve Rogers is the fighting sort, though and he keeps thinking, "I should tell Sam. I should tell him that I need help."

 

But he never does. He can't be even more of a burden than he already is.

 

4.

 

Steve gazes at the lipstick in the window for so long, one of the workers comes outside and asks if he'd like to buy it. It's bright red, a killer shade. It would make Peggy look like the maneater she was.

 

He looks at the scientific kids toys for so long, a mom asks how old his kid is. He almost says, "he's dead."

 

He oogles at the supplies in the kitchen for so long, Natasha asks if he's planning on building a bomb.

 

He stares at the picture of the tesseract for so long, Thor asks if he's afraid of it.

 

Steve is constantly thinking of them. He doesn't know how to stop.

 

5.

 

He watches every Disney movie. He watches Mulan, and the Lion King, and Big Hero 6. He remembers going to the theater to see Snow White.

 

Once he's watched them all twice, he thinks about his list of things to look up. He thinks about how he hasn’t looked up a single thing.

 

He just sits and stares at the computer all day long.

 

6.

 

The khakis are stiff, and the flannel is too small, but he garners comfort from them, from how they look and feel.

 

He hates the new clothes, the thin shirts and tight pants, detests the way agents stare at him, wide-eyed and inquiring. He knows he has to change to fit this century, but he's not ready. He doesn't like how they rush him.

 

He doesn't want to wear the clothes of today. He doesn't want something so visible about him to change.

 

(He won't admit that he's scared.)

 

7.

 

When he finally starts to wear the clothes he was given by SHIELD agents in the beginning, it's been 6 months.

 

(He squeezes himself into the stupid pants and the stupid shirt and he goes shopping. No one looks twice at him, but he feels eyes on him the whole time.)

 

(He still hates them, but he's been afraid for too long.)

 

8.

 

Steve Rogers is not a sleepwalker. He doesn't move things in his sleep.

 

Yet his things are always in disarray, put where they don't go. He found his blender in the chair by the TV. No one else has the key to his apartment. He's the only who could've moved it. 

 

He's a ghost haunting his own apartment.

 

9.

 

When they give him the files, he stares at every black, imposing deceased and he sits there for hours.

 

He can't stop thinking about how he didn't tell Dernier, Jim and Monty about Coney Island, and how he never praised Gabe's accent in Irish, which he was learning just for Steve.

 

He never told them all too many things. He hates himself for it.

 

10.

 

The tower is pristine, shiny and silver and brand new.

 

Tony is heckling him to move in,  _ like the other Avengers _ , he says, like it’ll make the deal more appealing.

 

Steve would love to. There's an art studio here, and a spare floor made specifically for him. There are rooms for Sam and Bucky.

 

When Tony gives him the tour, he imagines living there. He imagines coming home to this floor every day. The thing is, though, he can't live there.

 

Bucky is still out there. Sam still needs him to help look. And Tony and the others don't need him and his raincloud, anyway.

 

11.

 

He flies through the air, floating and being dragged down at the same time. He feels the pull of gravity, feels it like he did on the plane. He feels death like he did then, too. 

 

Steve looks up at the helicarrier, sees his old best friend. He closes his eyes.

 

He wonders how the citizens of DC will react. If he'll get any Facebook likes.

 

He wonders if he'll trend.

 

He stops wondering.

 

12.

 

He can't remember his Ma's voice.

 

Sarah Rogers has come and gone, been gone for nearly ten years.

 

He's forgotten her laugh. Her smile. Her everything.

 

The serum was supposed to help him with this, but now all he remembers is the stupid jokes his friends make and the words of his CO during dress down and all the times he’s killed. He doesn’t want to remember that stuff.

 

He just wants to remember his Ma.

 

13.

 

In the days following Peggy's death, Steve is an old hat at it. He doesn't stop the crying, same as he did with Bucky.

 

He doesn't let people not comfort him, unlike when he woke up and would snap if someone got too close to his gaping wounds.

 

He just lets things happen around him, while he thinks nonstop about how he will never see her again. Photos and videos will help stave off some of the pain, but he will never see her in flesh and blood again.

 

He would take her as the old woman who forgot him every ten minutes, if he could. He will take anything.

 

(He wishes he could've grown old with her, lived the life he was supposed to live, and not this one.)

 

14.

 

Steve looks at his Captain America sheets, a gag gift from Tony that was followed by "shield polisher". He thinks about how Bucky had seen some at the store and said he liked them.

 

He's had the sheets for months, since his birthday, but he just put them on.

 

He knows Bucky will like them. He wonders if Bucky will want them after he’s gone.

 


End file.
